Usa

Whoever wins the Republican nomination and takes on Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election is going to campaign hard on the issue of the US national debt and the idea that constantly running deficits is dragging the nation into decline. This is going to have a serious impact on the foreign policy debate in the US. It is striking that John Huntsman (pictured with Barack Obama), the former US ambassador to China who was governor of Utah and is running as a middle of the road Republican, has chosen to introduce himself to voters in New Hampshire with criticisms of the cost of the Libya mission. He said, ‘I

Will we see pictures of the dead Bin Laden? When Saddam’s sons were killed, pictures of their corpses were released by the American military, on the grounds that it was crucial for Iraqis to believe they were no more. This time, we’re told that Bin Laden has already been buried at sea, the Saudis having refused to repatriate his body. The CIA say they have pictures from yesterday’s assassination, and that the pictures of Bin Laden circulating right now (which have been picked up by some of the British media) are fake. It’s unclear whether they intend to release the real pictures. Bin Laden’s body was identified by some members

“There will be no mercy. Our troops will be coming to Benghazi tonight.” Perhaps it was the murderous threat contained within Gaddafi’s latest radio message that shocked the United Nations into action today — because shocked into action they have been. After sweating and toiling over the precise formulation of a resolution on Libya, the UN Security Council finally reached the voting stage this evening. And it has now voted 10-0 in favour of member states taking “all necessary measures … to protect civilian and populated areas, including Benghazi, while excluding an occupation force.” Brazil, India, China, Russia and — staggeringly — Germany all abstained. What this means, in practice,

The Middle East is set for renewed displays of public anger towards the region’s governments. Events in Bahrain are particularly worrying. Troops took control of the capital, killing at least four protesters in the worst violence in the Gulf kingdom in decades. The trouble in Bahrain, which houses the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet and is home to a large U.S. military base, illustrates a point Ben Judah and I make in a new article: that the three pillars of US post-World War II power in the Middle East – commercial ties, military bases and client states – are crumbling: “A new Middle East is taking shape, buffeted by Pacific trade

The world does really end with a whimper, not a bang, as T.S. Eliot said. After 31 years in power, seventeen days of protests, more than 300 dead and a shouting match between the US administration and its one-time Egyptian ally, it looks as if Hosni Mubarak will be leaving office tonight. Twitter is atwitter with news that the Egyptian strongman will soon make a TV appearance during which he is expected to hand power to newly-anointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman. Expect Tahrir Square to erupt in a festival of freedom, as the heroic, web-enabled protesters savour their unlikely but amazing victory. But while Egypt’s revolution has been more successful than

It is 25 years, to the day, since the Challenger shuttle tragically disintegrated over Cape Canaveral. Here is the deeply poignant piece that Christopher Hitchens wrote for The Spectator at the time: The Shuttle Disaster, Christopher Hitchens, The Spectator 1 Feb 1986 Cape Canaveral was the scene of so many non-lethal disasters in the early Sixties that it gratefully accepted a change of name to Cape Kennedy – even though the very change itself involved a memorial to a trauma. Few now remember the process by which the launching pad of the space programme reverted quietly to its earlier and (until Tuesday morning) more placid title. But nobody who saw the

Sarah Ellison has profiled Julian Assange and his relationship with the Guardian for Vanity Fair. Read the whole piece for each petulant tantrum, sordid disclosure and twist of hypocrisy, but here are the opening paragraphs to get you started. ‘On the afternoon of November 1, 2010, Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks.org, marched with his lawyer into the London office of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian. Assange was pallid and sweaty, his thin frame racked by a cough that had been plaguing him for weeks. He was also angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based

The latest cache of Wikileaks has done America no end of good. The Saudis urged the US to bomb Iran – a sign that the Arab world can make common cause with the States and Israel. It has also emerged that North Korea has sold the Iranians long range rockets – Moscow, Berlin and Istanbul are all within the Ayatollah’s range. But the most important revelation is that China has tired of North Korea’s lunatic machinations, recognising that the rogue state is an impediment to global and regional security. China is also convinced that the country will not survive Kim Jung-il’s death and favours a union of the two Koreas,